Democratic Tin: Observations from Bourke St
Melbourne has the largest surface Light Rail network in the world (there were larger ones, mainly in the Americas, but these all fell to the fashion of the mid last century for all-in motordom). And this network, despite its foibles and peculiarities, is part of what makes Melbourne such a successful, connected, and particular city.…
75 Comments Airport Rapid Transit: A Way Forward.
Below is a post I wrote in August 2016. We are re-running it now because it is confirmed what we have learnt since from both the seemingly endless number of reports on this issue and the increasingly dysfunctional traffic in the area.…
Sunday Reading 12 February 2017
Welcome back to Sunday reading.
From the Devonport Ferry. If your commute has tourists taking selfies on it then I’d say it’s probably pretty good:
Here is a clipping from yesterday’s Herald Commercial Property section. It neatly encapsulates the value of sorting out planning restrictions [Unitary Plan] and making high quality Transit investments [City Rail Link], naturally, given the context, through a property value lens: I wouldn’t get too hung up on the salesman’s boosterism in the second paragraph, as the main point is that the only way for tatty low value (in the broadest sense) parts of the city, like the current low rise commercial city fringe, to attract investment and therefore improvement is through value uplift.…
50 Years of waiting for an Auckland Rapid Transit system.
My father, Ian Reynolds 1922-2005, was an architect (as was my mother). He was also a what was then called a Town and Country Planner. After returning from working in England after the war he spent the rest of his career as partner in a big multidisciplinary practice in Auckland (missing the city of his youth: Wellington.…
Guest Post: Locomotion
This is a guest post by Wellington commenter Guy Marriage
Do the locomotion with me.
I am surprised and a little disappointed that there has not been much discussion here over KiwiRail’s decision to axe the electric locomotives on the main trunk line.…
Quay St: Oh Yeah
Off-road cycle routes are great, but I love on-street ones even more, as they are real city changers.
Both of course are required and required to be interconnected, but for today, here’s a celebration of the Quay St on-street cycle lanes, an important step towards a network:
Looking forward to this route being connected to the Nelson St on-street cyclelanes, the SkyPath, and Tamaki Drive.…
Ka mua, ka muri: Looking back in order to move forward
‘They always say time changes everything, but actually you have change them yourself’ -Andy Warhol
Ka mua, ka muri is a Māori proverb that expresses a great truth around a simple image. The image is of a person walking backwards into the future.…
City Centre Streets for the 21st Century
Santiago de Chile is home to some 6m+ souls, its origins date back to the 16th Century, and it has south American largest, and still expanding, Metro system. But, like almost all cities coming out of the 20th Century, its city centre streets have been allowed to be dominated by vehicles, with all of the disbenefits this brings.…
The Ideology of Traffic
Sometimes we come across something that is so perfect and so timely that it just needs repeating as it is. This is one of those times. The following post by Charles Marohn is lifted in its entirety from StrongTowns.org The Ideology of Traffic by Charles Marohn The greatest accomplishment of any ideology is to not be considered an ideology; to be a belief system that is not considered a belief system.…
Photo of the Day: Our Out of Balance Centre City Streets
Vincent and Pitt, Thursday 5:49 pm. Every corner occupied with people wanting to cross, including eight on this silly little delight of a ‘pedestrian refuge’, or nine if you include me, as I stepped back into the vehicle priority slip lane to take the shot, including at least one genuine princess.…
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